The present invention relates to a self-propelled truck for handling bins for picking fruit along rows of fruit trees and transporting them from an orchard to a harvest storehouse.
Various types of self-propelled bin-carrying truck for picking fruit in an orchard have already been proposed. In general, such trucks are provided with a front fork for lifting a bin from the ground and transferring it then to a loading platform of the truck, where it is in a handy position to receive fruit picked by pickers on board of the truck. The truck is also provided with a rear lowering fork arranged to lower bins filled with fruit from the loading platform to the ground, thereby making it possible for the front fork to lift one or more new empty bins to the loading platform in order to proceed with the fruit picking operation
A serious drawback of such known trucks is that, in case empty or full bins have been placed or lie alongside a row of trees for any reason whatsoever, the truck cannot advance or in order to do it to advance, the truck must load and unload in sequence, all the bins on its path, which operation can be time-consuming and involve a great waste of energy to be completed.
Self-propelled truck equipped with a filling up device generally termed “automatic bin filler” have been widely used. An “automatic bin filler” substantially comprises one or more conveyor belts radially arranged about a fruit lowering head arranged above a bin to be filled. Each piece of fruit picked up by the personnel on the loading platform is placed on a conveyor belt which in turns transfers it to the lowering head to be loaded into the bin located under the lowering head. For a better satisfactory throughput the truck tows a trailer transporting a given number of empty bins that must be transferred sequentially onto the loading platform of the cart for being filled up.
This second type of truck, although making it possible to considerably reduce picking times, it has at least two serious shortcomings, i.e. it is of course much more expensive and cannot not be used in all circumstances, e.g. in hilly orchards as the conveyor belts operate well on flat land, whereas uphill they may fail to feed the pieces of fruit towards the lowering head, which means that the fruit may roll backwards and to get lost or damaged and downhill they may fail to hold the fruits in position, i.e. the fruit may be violently unloaded into the bin and be damaged.